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First 6 years ago 17 7
7
Bottle
5
Sillage
8
Longevity
9
Scent
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Through the wild Courtesan

The headline summarizes my associations with this truly extraordinary fragrance in condensed form. I almost don't want to add anything to it anymore, since it seems difficult to describe the impression in a more differentiated way. Sometimes too many words destroy the essential. Nevertheless, I fear that not everyone associates the heading with the same thing as I do. Even if I took it as a statement, it would still need an explanation:

Durchs wild Kurdistan is known to be a novel by Karl May. The protagonists travel through the Middle East to Kurdistan and experience various adventures, fight, make friends and ultimately create peace between hostile camps.

Kurtisans were educated prostitutes, paid partners, often at the same time musicians, who were not as recognized as ladies or nuns in the Renaissance, but nevertheless respected by all. Both for a marriage (lady) and for joining a monastery (nun) a dowry was required which only wealthy families could pay. The role of the courtesan offered many advantages to women and girls who, due to poverty, were not able to follow these paths, such as education and access to the arts, access to key spiritual and secular figures, prosperity, and a higher reputation than ordinary prostitutes or the other single women who had to work in lower jobs for a starvation wage in order to survive.
(Source: Wikipedia)

What does that have to do with the smell of Worth for me?
Everything's in this scent: The smells of adventurous journeys on horseback through deserts, steppes and mountains. The smell of wild plants and animals, exotic spices, the sweat on skin and saddles, of heat, of escape, of fear, as well as the smell of the feeling of perfect freedom and the curious look into the big, wide world of adventures.
And then there's the impression of the cultivated, the smell of those who can wash and perfume themselves every day, a smell of historical folios and brocade-related ottomans. The scent of attractive ladies half sitting and half lying on this furniture. Ladies who are not ladies in the sense of that time, but courtesans, women who have at least managed to free themselves from poverty, exploitation and contempt by their own efforts. As far as it was possible for women of their origin at that time. And also that must have been a fight, an adventure, a desire for more freedom, even if of a completely different kind.

In the first moment Courtesan surprises with a Cologne freshness, cultivated confidence, cheerful freedom and vastness. Here, I mainly identify bergamot as the person responsible. The other fruits remain rather in the background and are also fresh and unsweet.
Now spices are added quickly. It's beginning to show: The journey goes in the direction of the Orient. Cinnamon, cardamom and clove combine with some flowers to a warm, powdery-spicy melange as it is sometimes boiled up to Tchai.
Sometimes more sometimes less it changes into a smell that transports the fear of destitute women without a lobby in the presence of powerful and unscrupulous men or the fear of men who fight for their lives in battles or seek their salvation in flight with their last strength. Here sweaty cardamom with biting orange blossom plays the role of the villain.

But all our protagonists manage to escape the threat: Soon they find themselves with even more Tchai, now also finely sweetened, in peaceful rooms with large bouquets of lush, fragrant flowers. Now our heroines and heroes can relax: You made it. They survived, they're safe.
This mixture of sweet spices and flowers is downright beguiling, even intoxicating, like a drug that lets them all sink into another, but nevertheless very erotic, physical world for many hours and later glide into precognitive dreams of cocoa with vanilla and a last breath of cinnamon

The next morning they wash themselves, spray after, and then it goes on with the freshness of bergamot and a few light fruits into a new, adventurous day.

I find Courtesan to be an extremely impressive, multi-layered fragrance with a concise, changeable course, which cannot be compared with any other fragrance I know. I can understand that he is displeased to some by sweaty, pungent and indeed sometimes plastic reminiscent echoes. Interestingly, these notes are not of the same intensity and length every day. At the first test they lasted maybe one hour and were very dominant. I found that very unpleasant. At the second test I wondered where this phase was, I felt only a short response right after spraying and it was immediately gone again. Today she had to wait for herself, but vanilla came through much more and much earlier and the fragrance became more pompous than on the other two days. Nevertheless, I still notice some of the stinky notes in my clothes from yesterday, which are now discreet and no longer unpleasant.
Perhaps the differences in wearing them are also related to temperature and humidity. To find out more, I have to test the scent a bit more often and also in other seasons.

One thing is clear: Courtesan offers new adventures every day you wear it.
And although it is definitely not for every day, for some days it is the only true thing.
7 Comments
First 6 years ago 26 9
6
Bottle
7
Sillage
8
Longevity
9.5
Scent
Translated Show original Show translation
Heaven can wait
Only about 2 weeks ago, after my first tests of Salt Caramel, I agreed with FabianO that, despite a certain fascination, I saw no real reason to wear this fragrance.
Yesterday, I was eagerly awaiting the post office to deliver the bottle I bought at the souk. What had happened there in the last 14 days? I'm afraid it was exactly the same thing that happened with popcorn and the like: Sometime between the first and the eighth bite, the vanguard of drug molecules arrives at the receptors in the brain - bang! - addicted. And Angelliese is now my trusted scent dealer.

Yes, I admit, this is not a subtle, noble fragrance, not an exquisite work of art by a rapt perfumer who brings us the blue from the sky to float in never known spheres. This is also not an intellectual fragrance that presents us with the art of romanticism and the art of the artificial or whatever interesting. This is a down-to-earth scent, physical, almost bold. It's the perfumer who gets us the devotional items from the nearest confectionery or just the popcorn from the counter. Awesome! And, sorry for the expression, awesome

Salt Caramel is sweet and salty, cream and tonka at the same time. It has hardly any run, only towards the end there is minimal vanilla. That says it all, but still too little.
Because how do you manage to create the impression of salt, although you can't smell salt, you can only taste it? It's ingenious how this salty impression succeeds here very authentically without appearing synthetic.
And not all sweeties are the same. At Salt Caramel, I smell the sweetness of sugar, roasted sugar. And this sweetness is completely different from the sweetness of honey or dextrose or certain sweet smelling substances that you smell as such, like maltol.
It may even contain maltol, but it does not smell like it: Ah, yes, the sweetness comes from maltol
The warmth of Tonka combines sweet and salty into a pleasant whole. When I read about popcorn in the comments here, I could understand it, I wouldn't have thought of it myself, maybe because I rarely eat popcorn. Also the statement that the fragrance should represent "Sea Salt Caramel Truffles" from Charbonnel and Walker immediately makes sense to me, even if I don't know these special truffles. Although it sounds much more profane than "Sea Salt Caramel Truffles", the overall impression reminds me more of the Ritter Sport chocolate "Honey-Salt-Almond", which with its whole, salted almonds is one of my favourite varieties.
And just like this chocolate, which is not a gourmet chocolate of an exclusive brand, but is quite normal and down-to-earth and available in almost every supermarket, which, yes it is true, is actually too sweet and not enough chocolaty (but I love it anyway), so is Salt Caramel. So relaxing normal, so physical, so salt, sugar, almond, cream, somehow simple and just great!
As beautiful as the sky may be, it is also possible to revel on the earth.
Heaven can wait.

I would like to thank Angelliese for the bottle and Pudelbonzo for the term "fragrance dealer of my trust".
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